


in the clear (coming like a rebirth)

by luninosity



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Edwardian, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Edwardian Politics, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Love, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Sexual Fantasy, Tea, Teasing, Telepathic Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 12:37:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2693243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik awakened precisely on time, the way he’d trained himself to over long years, and lay in the bed for a while, breathing.</p><p>Charles, as ever, unfailingly woke up thinking about sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the clear (coming like a rebirth)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/gifts).



> Happy Secret Mutant to a lovely friend! 
> 
> Title from the Foo Fighters song "In The Clear," this time.
> 
> For the prompt of "All those days at the mansion, all the empty rooms, the quiet hallways, wine cellars, secret war bunkers, dark places for secret rendezvous. Secret words to arrange meetings, subliminal messages, not because they have to hide from the others exactly, but because they love sneaking around and finding awesome new places to get off.Maybe it starts accidentally? Like, they're newly together and stumble into it, discover that both get off on it. Erik sending Charles filthy visuals knowing they can't do anything until a training session is over. Charles touching himself through his trousers in full view of Erik where anyone could see if they looked and where they can't do anything about it, just to tease and edge. Anything like this where they draw it out, edge each other and then sneak off to some dark corner when they can barely hold it together anymore."
> 
> I don't know why it wanted to be an Edwardian AU, but it did. :-)

Erik awakened precisely on time, the way he’d trained himself to over long years, and lay in the bed for a while, breathing.

Inhale. Exhale. The taste of sharp brittle rust-leaf autumn air and cozy heavy-thread-count sheets and the flavor of Charles’s shoulder against the corner of his mouth, sleep-warm and freckle-sprinkled. Here at the start of the glittering new century, New York in the year nineteen-hundred and seven. Here at their school, the haven he’d built together with the currently-snoring exuberantly-haired man tucked into his arms.

Home. He smiled to himself; and the motion or emotion woke Charles, who yawned and murmured drowsy affection directly into Erik’s head. Also drowsy interest; Charles unfailingly woke up thinking about sex.

 _Not UNFAILINGLY,_ Charles objected, rocking hips lazily back into Erik’s stiffening erection. _When I wake up naked with you. Which is, granted, every morning, so—_

“As I said,” Erik said, and kissed the back of his neck, happily being the big spoon, arms and legs wound around him. _And I am of course right. As always._

“Ha,” Charles said, and wriggled against him again. _I seem to recall some unfortunate fashion choices involving purple suits and red—_

Erik’s fingertips found a nipple and pinched, not hard. Charles shivered and then laughed. _Trying to distract me with sex? Yes, please._

 _You enjoy the distraction._ He trailed lips over the nape of Charles’s neck; trailed fingers lower, excruciatingly gradual, over the plane of Charles’s stomach. Rested his hand flat over enticing soft curls, not touching where Charles wanted him most.

Charles muttered dire commentary regarding Erik’s usefulness in bed and tried to turn around to face him. Erik whispered “Shh” into the curve of his ear, leaning purposefully against him. Charles loved sensation, the caress of voice and hands intoxicating every sense, every nerve ending; Erik was good at playing with those sensations, finding and exploiting quivering yearning spots.

_You’re making this sound like a campaign._

_Isn’t it?_ He punctuated that question with a deliberate nudge of his hips, pressing his own hard cock into the wonderful line of Charles’s backside. “Me seducing you…making you come apart for me…how I want you, in our bed…”

 _I am not a military strategy,_ Charles sighed, but all the tension’d gone out of his body—what little there’d been in the first place—and he felt wholly content in both thought and physical hold. _Go on, then. Strategize._

Erik grinned, letting teeth graze the curve of Charles’s throat. Thought, not too privately, about campaigns and winning and losing, about conquering and being conquered, and his heart on a battlefield at Charles’s feet.

Not entirely a metaphor, that. Five years earlier, just after the turn of the new century, they’d been in South Africa, strangers meeting amid the chaos of the Boer Wars and the low-lying sunshine over golden plains. Charles had been a soldier, albeit one who’d joined up temporarily as part of a relief effort—scientists and medics and an established imperial presence—and already beginning to turn away from the expansionist hands of the British Empire; Erik’d been in pursuit of a countryless man named Sebastian Shaw and in love with nothing except his goal, and even that’d been a question, not that he’d find his parents’ murderer but that he’d know how to define _love_ if asked.

Charles had come with him instantly. Sebastian Shaw had been of course a military threat—no mercenary should wield so much power with so little regard for the rest of the world—and Charles had understood that.

Charles had also looked up at him and smiled, smiled with enchanting blue eyes, and thought: _you’re not alone, I’m not alone, neither of us will ever have to be alone, Erik, say yes, please._

Erik had. Erik will say yes to Charles forever. Erik had known then that while he himself was full of sharp edges and _no_ s and iron blades, Charles would always be his _yes_.

He knew that now. This fading-fall gilt-and-russet morning. And forever, of course.

He nudged Charles over into a spill of sheets and frosty sunshine—beams sneaking around cracks at the edges of curtains, not that either of them minded the sun being a witness—and left kisses like gemstones dotting the arrow of Charles’s spine, each vertebra another spot to adore. Charles blushed a little but didn’t object, though he _did_ let Erik feel the way his cock was being pressed into the mattress, the frisson of pleasure when he rocked his hips.

Erik brushed lips over the next knot of bone, and the next, and then stopped, breathing out pensively, at the scar.

Charles, with astounding flexibility, stretched a hand around to touch him. No words; they’d said those words, and sometimes even listened, before.

Erik did not precisely blame himself for the simple fact of that bullet-wound. He did blame himself for not doing more, before or after; for not keeping Charles safe; for not knowing that one of Shaw’s minions would try to shoot him even after Erik’d put a spinning coin through the man’s employer’s skull; for not thinking of every remotest possibility.

He’d deflected the bullet out of instinct. It’d been bad luck that Charles had been getting up, recovered from the dizziness of telepathically pinning Shaw in place for Erik to complete their joint mission. Sheer stupid human bad luck.

He’d held Charles in his arms on a South African beach, sun on their heads and ash in his mouth, and reached further into the shimmering world of iron than he’d ever known he could. Had stopped the bleeding. Had kept Charles immobile, no further damage, until they’d made it to the closest hospital.

Charles _could_ walk. Therapy and time had helped. Charles would never again waltz with him, laughing as they scandalized proper society in Cape Town by kissing in the middle of the ballroom; but Charles could walk, and had wrapped his legs around Erik’s waist in bed, the previous night.

Charles said nothing, at the moment; only broadcast steadiness and love and desire like a signal flame into Erik’s mind and heart. Erik kissed him again for that, breathing evenly over the faded star that meant _still here._

Shifting position, he caught sight of a manila folder on the nightstand. Charles’d brought it up the previous night, meaning to read through the contents; Erik’s hands and mouth and smile had proven to be irresistible distractions. Erik himself wasn’t sure about the smile, but Charles seemed to like it; that was what mattered in the end.

“Charles,” he said, shaping words into the curve of Charles’s left hip, “what time is your meeting, this afternoon?”

One blue eye peeked out from beneath hair. “You’re asking me about President Roosevelt _now_ —?” And then, upon picking up Erik’s train of thought, _oh, bloody hell!_

“You have homework.”

“I hate being a superhero,” Charles mourned, without any real sincerity. “And a genius, and the person the President calls every time a villain decides to blow up San Francisco or conquer France, or when he just wants advice on the state of scientific research and whether we can mutate lions to make them harder to hunt—all right, no, I don’t actually hate all that. Though if he asks me about the lions again I might implant a suggestion that he break into a jig every time someone says the word strawberry.”

“Strawberry?”

“Too many seeds.” Charles rolled over onto his back; his erection poked upward, flagging somewhat but remaining on display. Erik kissed his stomach and tried to will his own desire to fade, though not too successfully. He enjoyed the feeling too much: himself gazing at Charles, wanting Charles, having Charles. The consummation could wait—and it _could_ : the later would be there when they needed it. No rush. No hurry. Only time. Himself and Charles and a future.

The unsatisfied pulse of want got a little sweeter, at that idea.

He said, “You know you love being the smartest person on the planet, Charles,” and thought: _I love getting to tell you when you’re wrong, and also I love you._

“I am going to read this report about the state of the Russian economy,” Charles said, with great dignity, “and pretend that you never said that, because otherwise we’ll have to discuss your fashion choices all over again,” and added _I love you and I have no idea how I’m going to avoid permanently associating Russian beet production with the urge to jump on you and get THAT inside me…_

“I can buy beets after class,” Erik said, “you can have them for tea,” and thought about Charles and goodness—not naiveté, but genuine unflinching battle-scarred optimism—and superheroes. He himself had done and was eminently capable of continuing to do terrible things, blood and death and cynicism with red-stained hands. He’d kill or die to keep the world safe, to make it into the vision that Charles saw and Erik somehow helplessly had fallen into believing; he’d kill or die a hundred times over for Charles without hesitation.

It’d been a while, though. He taught literature these days. Went running in the mornings, and brought back interestingly-colored leaves to drop onto Charles’s hair in the study. And made, evidently, terrible jokes about beets.

The terrible joke made Charles laugh, though, so that was good. Everything was good, including the root vegetables and the chilly morning sunbeams and Erik’s hand resting on freckled skin.

He said, “You’re going to be late, and as much as I would like it, Charles, you probably shouldn’t turn up for breakfast naked. Or for your meeting.”

Charles said, “Oh, damn,” and Erik wondered how anyone could pack so much invective into a single mild swear-word, and fell in love all over again.

He kissed Charles one more time and got up—Charles sighed, thoughts luminous with desire and frustration and merriment—and went down to start breakfast and heat the kettle with a flick of one hand. Charles’s presence remained in a corner of his awareness the entire time: his tether to joy.

 

Charles brought his reading to breakfast. He looked up when Erik set eggs in front of him, and smiled, brief and fond and distracted, and turned a page; the rest of the teaching staff at the Xavier-Lehnsherr School for the Gifted stared shamelessly or smirked or blushed. Alex and Armando comfortably and not at all subtly reached for each other’s hands.

Erik sighed, too, and said, “Charles, you’re projecting.”

“I am not,” Charles said without looking up. “They do that on their own. Come and help me translate this bit; you speak Russian better than I do.”

“Can’t you fish it out of someone’s head,” Erik said, but leaned over anyway because Charles needed his skills. Charles leaned in too and caught the corner of his mouth in a kiss. “I could, but you’re right here and this is very technical, so I can’t just flirt with random linguistically-inclined minds…”

“You flirt with all of them. It’s about potato yields. Is that important?” He’d never care if Charles flirted with half the known universe. Charles never meant anything by it; natural as breathing, that charm. And Charles came home to _him_. He let the possessiveness surface, not bothering to hide the fierce undying sense of it, and Charles smiled silently and agreed _yes, always, always yours_.

“It might be. If Russia’s having difficulties with staple production, that’ll affect trade negotiations and imports and exports and certain mutual-aid pacts…” Charles ate a forkful of eggs mostly because Erik’d put the fork in his hand. _Thank you._

 _Mine, you said._ “It’ll also affect their military strength. Armies run on their stomachs.”

Charles paused, not really annoyed—this argument was well-worn and precious as a love letter—and murmured, “You always have to start there, don’t you…”

“One of us should. Speaking of…”

Charles considered the fork nudging itself against his hand, eyebrows up. Then ate the bite, looking speculative.

“What?”

“Crop production, feeding armies, mutual aid…I _do_ have to see the President this afternoon. Also, you’re brilliant.”

“I’ll eavesdrop,” Erik said. They’d already discussed that one. A known former mercenary and technical foreign national couldn’t officially advise President Roosevelt on international affairs. Erik could and would advise Charles, and then lead strike teams as necessary.

“What do I have to do to distract you from violence, strike teams, honestly,” Charles inquired, grandiose and world-weary, waving a hand. _Oh, I know…_ And that hand slid lower, over the sharp folds of Edwardian-tidy waistcoat and trousers; paused to toy with his pocket-chain, links slipping through fingers like gleaming water. Erik’s breath caught.

Charles grinned. Twisted the chain around index finger, middle, fourth. Skin and metal and pure sensuality, ringing like a bell, and Erik could feel it all. He swallowed, as the arousal shot like liquid gold down his spine.

Charles took the chain off, wound it around fingertips, then spread his legs—right there at the breakfast table, and Erik’s heart was pounding—and traced shameless lines along his own thigh, and up to the obscene obvious jut of his arousal, tenting his trousers, thick and proud.

 _Charles_ , Erik prayed, voice completely gone.

 _Don’t worry,_ Charles purred, _they all think we’re eating your delicious eggs_ —and Erik caught a glimpse of what Sean and Hank and Alex must be seeing, which was both headmasters calmly and unremarkably nibbling breakfast foods and translating Russian. Charles was doing that, so powerful and so lovely; the casual display of strength was making Erik a little weak-kneed, unless that was just the arousal. No blood to spare for those knees.

Charles smirked. Stroked himself through his suit, slow and obviously appreciating each touch. And this was so many kinds of wrong and right, public but not, kept from becoming visible only by Charles’s choice, while Erik trembled and ached to push that hand out of the way and take over himself, his hand on Charles’s cock, Charles touching him in turn right here in the sunny kitchen with the wide windows—he could slide a hand into his own trousers and relieve the building throb in his balls, could come watching Charles tease himself, could come in his pants or, better yet, into Charles’s hand or willing mouth, Charles getting on both knees on the kitchen floor and gazing up as Erik’s come splashed across his face—

 _Oh, really,_ Charles observed, half-amused and equally turned on. _I do like that one. Alternately, I could put you on YOUR knees, and make you wait with your hands behind your back while I—_

Erik swore in several languages and shifted position in his chair. Every rub of his cock against fine fabric felt like torture, and he’d _been_ tortured. This might be worse. Or infinitely better. He couldn’t tell.

Charles lifted his hand, took a finger into his own mouth, sucked. His lips shone wetly, and his eyes held Erik’s.

 _You love this,_ Erik whispered, and Charles nodded. _We both do._

They did. Denial, daring, exquisite edges of danger and the drawing-out of desire into intricate languishment. Not easy, because they weren’t easy, not them. Never easy, and always _more_ , together. So much more.

A sound, a disturbance, a question: someone asking Charles for input. The interruption tugged at shared senses; Erik blinked as worlds collided, the illusion and the real. The insistent hardness between his legs was _very_ real, and not going away.

Charles, looking purely angelically professorial, cleared his throat and inquired, “Sorry, Sean, would you repeat that?”

“Oh, sure,” Sean said, oblivious and unbothered, and reiterated nonsense about lesson plans and his thoughts on safe flight training for aerodynamically gifted students. Erik, extremely and emphatically bothered, said, “Didn’t I push you off a roof? They’ll be fine,” and received scolding glares from both his target and his fellow headmaster.

 _I love you,_ he promised silently, and Charles kissed him without moving, telepathic lips warm and sweet and beloved over his. _I know._

_And I’m not going to be able to stand up any time soon, much less go for a run._

_I know._

_And I’m very good at revenge._

Charles, still talking to Sean, sent back yet another, _Oh, I KNOW._ This one came with a ridiculous over-emphasized wink. Erik’s heart did flips, buoyant with love.

He went back to eating his eggs, since Charles was distracted, and pondered the rest of the day and its many hours to be filled up with various means of mutually enjoyable revenge.

 

The first opportunity arose—which was very much the appropriate term—during their respective classes. They both had morning teaching duties this semester; Erik preferred that in any case, being far more of a morning person than Charles, who would if given the opportunity sleep until noon and then stay up all night dissecting chess matches and political maneuverings and gene sequences with unbridled enthusiasm. Because Erik did the scheduling, they often ended up with morning classes and the rest of the day free. Charles had only objected once, and then only until Erik had pointed out the merits of lazy afternoon sex in his office, with demonstrations and hands-on persuasion.

Charles, at the moment, was preoccupied with explanations of cellular structure to cheerful teenagers. The Xavier-Lehnsherr School for the Gifted was of course a refuge for the children with inexplicable gifts or abilities; it was also a school, more or less like any other, and Charles had been adamant about having a challenging and well-rounded curriculum. This also explained why Erik was currently teaching the German Romantics. Hoffmann, specifically, today. He’d always liked “Der Sandmann.”

He put his students into groups and told them to write their own letters, matching the epistolary style of the story, as if they’d been witnesses to the events. Automatons and madness and obsession; mania and eerie horror and the power of manipulation and the importance of eyes, of seeing, of knowing. He checked on them once or twice, and then wandered back to the front and flipped through papers and thought Charles’s name very clearly.

 _Hmm?_ Charles picked up as promptly as ever, balancing conversation and lecture with the ease of a skilled juggler. _Everything going smoothly?_

 _That depends on your definition. For example, THIS could be going smoothly…_ He pictured the image with absolute precision. His fingers, slickness, Charles’s body opening up and clenching around his hand. And he sent that image as clearly as he could. In full sensory detail.

He couldn’t exactly hear Charles gasp, and in fact Charles had good enough control not to, but the mental impression went something like _!!!!_

Ah. Success. Excellent strategy, indeed.

 _Hmph._ Erik could practically see blue eyes narrow. _You realize I’m in the middle of a lecture on mitosis…_

 _Really?_ More images. Charles on hands and knees, back arched as Erik plunged into him. Charles on his back, looking up, hair stuck to his face with sweat, moaning and shuddering through yet another orgasm, stomach already painted with evidence of an earlier climax or two. Charles limp and trembling from overstimulation and still begging for more, wanton and sex-flushed and beautiful, whimpering Erik’s name as Erik slid inside him and closed a merciless hand around his dripping cock.

Perhaps he could fit that hand inside Charles, after. Charles’s hole would be loose and stretched and wet, well-used and filled up with Erik’s seed; he could push fingers in, and a thumb, and keep going, while Charles made those decadent tiny broken noises of need and opened up for the plundering.

The thought made his trousers uncomfortably tight; he had to sit down behind his desk, hopefully not with noticeable haste. Worth it, though, because Charles was worse off, breathless even in their heads, riding the glorious edge of _not enough please don’t stop_ and _oh God we can’t not now please—_

 _Tell me to stop, then._ Charles taking _him_ , this time: powerful shoulders and thighs and firm assurance and inexorable kindness, tender in the way that Erik’d never known could be possible, the way that took him apart and broke him down and rebuilt him anew every single time.

Charles sent him an answer that contained no words at all, merely mute crackles of lightning, coruscation coiled up into a shimmering ball of white-hot want shot through with glowing electric arcs. Every atom of their connection quivered like plucked harpstrings, like the note on the verge of being set free; and the lack of completion pooled into a fabulous all-encompassing throb.

 _Shh,_ Erik finally murmured, for both their sakes—Charles might be marginally closer to breaking, but that very fact was sizzling along Erik’s nerves and stirring in his groin—and let up on the images, and offered a mental stroking of Charles’s hair, cradling that head against his shoulder. _Shh, it’s okay, I’ll take care of you later, promise. After class._

Charles, after a moment, exhaled. Shaky, but no longer getting lost in pure radiance. The intensity ebbed a fraction, settling into a low-lying serene ache. _You’re not even sorry._

_Not in the least._

_Neither’m I. After class?_

_We can skip lunch._

_We—oh, no, we can’t, Hank wanted to talk to me about the lab and ordering some new equipment, some of the Stark Industries molecular bonding toys, and it’s rather expensive so I wanted to go over the specs and be sure we had the space, since I’d hate to order a giant atom-splitting prototype and not be able to fit it through the door—_

_I’d make you a bigger door._

_So romantic, love._ Charles blew him a kiss, intangible and inarguably real _. We’ll see how quickly we can manage lunch and Hank, perhaps._

_Your meeting’s at two._

Charles borrowed a few of Erik’s earlier profanities, at that.

 _Sorry,_ Erik said, half regretting that he’d gotten them both so aroused, half not regretting it at all. He felt wonderful. He wasn’t used to that even now, five years in. He wasn’t sure he ever would be, forever slightly disconcerted by happiness and Charles, and he didn’t mind that. Like the first moment of weightlessness in an elevator, like the beginning of a journey, over and over.

 _Revenge,_ Charles mused darkly. Showers of sparks like rainbow rain in shared thoughts. Kaleidoscopic and sugar-spun. _Just wait._

 _I promise you vast anticipation,_ Erik told him, and then one of his students waved a hand, and he could by this point stand up without embarrassing himself, so he went. Charles kissed him again and retreated, off to finish with mitosis, but the anticipation remained. Skittering expectation along his veins, in every heartbeat. Every moment filled up with desire, suffused with molten gold.

 

Charles was late for lunch, and came through the door chattering animatedly at Hank, running one hand through his hair and saying, “—yes, all right, of course we _do_ need the bigger one, we have to keep up with Fischer’s artificially synthesized amino-acid chains—” Hank looked briefly thoughtful and said, “Do you know if he was working on group bonds, at all, or can we go that direction?”

Erik resigned himself to taking second place to a discussion of DNA-related experimentation, and did not stab the knife he’d been using for peanut-butter into the table. Not more than a millimeter, anyway.

“Oh, sorry!” Charles looked up, eyes apologetic but glinting with delight; and Erik’s heart hurt with something closer to love than resentment, clear-edged and painfully splendid. “I had students staying after class, and then Hank wanted to talk, and I knew you were marking papers—”

Erik hadn’t been, though he did have a pile waiting on his desk, but that wasn’t worth arguing over, not with the odd lightness in his chest. “Never mind,” he said, and handed over sandwiches.

The students had long since dispersed, having a somewhat earlier lunch period; Charles leaned elbows on the kitchen table and got peanut-butter at the corner of his mouth and looked about fifteen years old, as far from a wounded-veteran soldier and genius telepath and Presidential Scientific Advisor as could be imagined. His hair fell into his eyes, and Erik would’ve wondered how someone so blindingly _heroic_ could fall in love with a revenge-scarred mercenary who’d put knives through men’s skulls, except that he knew nothing was ever so simple, and Charles wasn’t pure white any more than Erik was only black.

Complicated messy layers of grey. Twining together in the shadows and in-betweens.

Charles licked jam off a fingertip. Smiled at him. The whole world sparkled, every appliance and air molecule in the cavernous school-sized kitchen taking notice and putting on a better shine.

Alex and Armando turned up. So did Sean and Moira, which meant that the conversation devolved into a debate over L. Frank Baum and whether or not Oz would be welcoming to mutants. Erik lurked around the fringes of the conversation and made sure Charles finished the sandwich instead of using it to illustrate the finer points of Tin Man limb replacement, and subsequently pondered what he could do with a Tin Man and his own abilities. An extra body in battle. A sword. A projectile if need be.

Charles produced a pen out of nowhere at all, post-sandwich, and started twiddling it between fingers. Erik’s attention was instantly riveted.

He knew that pen. A particular alloy, that pen. A gift from a fellow scientist, nothing like it in the world, and it hummed and sang to his extra senses, and it normally lived on his desk.

Charles stroked the body of the pen with lazy, almost careless, fingers. Didn’t so much as glance his way.

Erik felt that touch like a caress to places he couldn’t see. Invisible hands along invisible hyper-sensitive nerve-endings, singing.

Charles put the pen in his mouth and rearranged salt-shakers on the table to model…something. Oz landmarks. Flying-monkey DNA. Erik wasn’t following. His pen, his metal, surrounded by the heat of those lips, that mouth; inundated by heat, taken into it…

Charles touched his tongue to the tip of the pen, delicately.

Erik clamped hands around the table. His forgotten peanut-butter knife tied itself in a knot.

 _Really,_ Charles chided, _do I have to train you as well as the students? Self-control?_

Erik, white-knuckled and unable to ignore the tiny flicks of tongue across his metal—no sensation like it, no other sensation in the world—got out, _Dammit, Charles…_

_Didn’t you say you loved this?_

_I said WE love this._

_We do,_ Charles concurred, and let him feel the other side too: how hard Charles was, how desperate, how desperate he’d been all morning, balanced on the delirious crazy high of unrelieved tension, every breath a pleasurable rasp in his lungs.

 _Regretfully,_ that elegant voice added, tea-and-scones tidiness concealing an utterly filthy imagination, _I have that meeting…and I’ll be feeling this throughout the entire discussion, I hope you’re aware._

“Yes,” Erik said, inadvertently aloud because he was losing track of where he was and which sensation was what. A few fellow-instructor heads swiveled his way; he glared their curiosity into submission. _And I approve. Sending you off to meet with the President while you’re thinking about me, about your mouth on my cock, what I’m going to do to you…_

Charles licked the pen.

Erik bit back a scream as his cock tried to pulse, tried to come, tried to spill its heaviness inside his pants.

Charles stepped in and did— _something_ telepathic—and the imminence backed off. He still terribly needed to let go, to reach the peak—but the immediacy wasn’t there. He could breathe. Through uncomfortable arousal, and with his skin feeling too tight and hot; but he could breathe.

 _Love you,_ Charles purred, and gave up on the pen, having made his point about revenge in spectacular style. _I’ll put it back on your desk._

“I’ll walk you upstairs,” Erik announced—no one else batted an eye, being used to hearing half of Charles’s unspoken conversations—and took his arm.

Outside Charles’s office—they had separate spaces in case they needed to make phone calls and such, though they were right next door and generally in at the same time—he shoved blue eyes up against a wall and kissed cheerful lips until Charles went from laughing to moaning softly and arching hips into his. Erik, mindful of strain on an old injury, kept a hand at the small of his back and put the other one into disheveled hair, tugging Charles’s head back, baring his throat for deeper kisses, the scrape of teeth, sucking visible marks into pale skin.

Charles groaned his name, rocking into him; their bodies met and moved together, friction delicious where their cocks rubbed through suit fabric. The world fell away, leaving them and the hallway and the heat.

Charles was panting, flushed and messy and gorgeously rumpled, when Erik reluctantly eased up on the kisses. His mouth was wet and swollen, and his eyes were bluer than sapphires and summer skies and any metaphorical treasure, and he looked exactly like someone who’d just been teased to within an inch of rapturous orgasm.

“Go to your meeting,” Erik said, and Charles glared weakly, made an attempt to talk, gave up, tried again. “After _that?”_

Erik shrugged, held up his pen—he’d snuck it out of Charles’s pocket; old criminal skills coming in handy—and said, “I do have papers to grade.”

The expression in blue eyes made the distraction of marking essays with the imprint of Charles’s mouth lingering on his lips and his pen entirely worth it, then.

 

Charles’s meeting involved a video-telephonic call—which in and of itself was a technological marvel and a state secret; no one was supposed to know about the Stark Industries classified projects, much less the existence of one super-advanced installation at a purported school—and lasted three hours, and Erik could feel the headache after the first one. Listening in through their telepathic link, he heard Charles hang up and promptly flop face-first into folded arms on his desk; he pushed the door open and came in with peppermint tea and a heart that refused to stop skipping unhappy apprehensive beats.

“How’re your financial reports,” Charles said vaguely, not moving.

“Fine.” In fact he’d spent the last two hours coping with rising tension by hurling knives into the window-frame. He’d not been able to concentrate on the school’s finances. Charles was in pain and he couldn’t interrupt. Politics and the fate of the world, and blue eyes wouldn’t thank him for electromagnetic interference prematurely ending the conversation.

Charles sat up enough to accept the tea, down half of it, and toss him a crooked grin. “How’re your knives?”

“Extremely accurate. Come here.” A plushly pillowed sofa took up one corner of Charles’s office: for reading, for comforting disconsolate students, for lying on when Charles’s back was playing up. Erik sat down and got Charles settled amid cushions, head pillowed on Erik’s thigh.

“So. Germany.”

“Centralizing national sentiment, consolidating power, and they _do_ have a few mutants that I’ve been able to track, working for various political parties…” Charles sighed. Shut his eyes. Erik kneaded the back of his neck, the tired spot at the base of his skull. He knew about the headaches; Charles hated talking to distant two-dimensional depictions of human beings for much the same reason he got unnerved by the cinema and the jerky skips of the brand-new moving picture technology. For a telepath, those flattened-but-still-living images felt profoundly _wrong_.

“It’s not just that. Oh— _right_ there, thank you…you know how I feel about him. Roosevelt. So enthusiastic, so exhausting…I do admire the work he’s doing to promote scientific advancement and the national park system and progressive politics; I only wish he were a bit less eager to use his big stick to enforce it all…mmm, you have lovely fingers.”

“I know,” Erik agreed, and kept on with the massage, making small concentric circles over a temple, cupping Charles’s head in the heat of his hand, noting every flinch or slow acceptance of relaxation. “You know how I feel about big sticks, Charles.”

Both sapphire eyes opened to dance at him, though Charles only raised an eyebrow in appreciation of the innuendo and answered the other layer instead. “I know how you feel about fighting. Do you think it’ll come to that? Not soon.”

“No, but if all the mutual assistance pacts get invoked, and they will, and with the current trend toward belligerence and shows of strength…” He didn’t bother to shrug. Couldn’t, without moving a hand. And Charles needed him. “It’ll come.”

“I wish you were wrong.” Charles sounded for a fleeting moment younger again, like the boy he’d resembled in the kitchen; deceptive, that. Charles could take on the world and win without even trying. Charles knew about being a soldier, and about bullies, and about lonely battles fought in the dark; Charles didn’t talk about his childhood or why his suffragette sister so rarely came home or any of those bruise-shaded stepfather-shaped memories.

That was all contained in that simple statement: Charles knew he was right, and wished regardless that he might be wrong.

Someday, maybe, that could be true. Erik could see it, could see that future hovering in the far-off distance. Could see it with his hand in Charles’s hair.

What he said, because that was what he had to offer, was, “We’ll be ready.”

“I know.” Charles breathed out, warm over Erik’s leg; Erik for no real reason became abruptly more aware of those lips so close to his thigh, his cock. The dwindling afternoon folded itself into twilight around them: indigo and grey and kind and private, theirs alone.

Charles turned his head just enough to press a kiss to Erik’s leg; Erik stroked his hair, and felt Charles go lax and calm and content beside him. The arousal came back, not a rush of urgency this time, but a hushed liquid reverent kind of rapture, sunlight gathering contentedly beneath summer-warmed ocean surfaces. Every touch, every breath, supercharged with radiance.

They stayed put while the sun went down and the stars came out. No need to hurry. All the time in the world, to feel this, together.

After a while Charles sighed and said, _we should probably go down for dinner…_

It was, fortunately or unfortunately, one of the nights they ate with students in the dining hall; they didn’t always, but Charles had gotten used to formal halls at Oxford and had decided that while their version was definitely _in_ formal, it was important to get everyone in the same room at least once a week. The school wasn’t that big; they knew all their students by name, and the students knew them.

Erik didn’t ask whether he was sure, because Charles would never let anything as trivial as a headache get in the way of young Kitty or Bobby asking him serious questions about dinosaurian feathers over spaghetti and meatballs. He asked, softly, _better? Or should I touch you other places, too, to make certain?_

And Charles laughed, weary and marvelous, and swung legs to the floor and got up, holding out both hands. Erik took them, let himself be pulled to his feet, and found tempting lips for one more kiss in the dancing fuchsia-gold of the setting sun.

 

Charles decided they needed more wine, halfway through the meal. Erik followed telepathic beckoning down to the wine cellar, and Charles flung arms around his neck and kissed him in the cool dimness among appreciative green-glass glints. Erik, surprised but not unwilling—obviously Charles was feeling recovered, then—kissed back with unyielding devotion and snuck hands up under Charles’s shirt and undid waistcoat buttons with a look.

Charles _did_ insist on buying buttons with metal settings. So convenient.

“You know,” he observed, as busy freckled fingertips found his cock through suit-trousers and squeezed, “they’ll know—you weren’t exactly—subtle—”

“We have to practice stealth missions sometime,” Charles proclaimed, glancing wickedly up at him, moving the hand just _so_ , “we’ll lose our touch…”

“Adrenaline,” Erik said, and tugged Charles’s trousers open, got that wonderful length into his hand, thick and hot and silken, already wet at the tip, “danger, excitement…knowing we might get caught, knowing they’re all up there waiting for us to come back with wine…”

“Talking away, while you and I have _this_.” Charles was working his cock leisurely, Erik’s length sliding in and out of that strong grip. “Someone could decide to come down here at any moment…of course, I could make certain they didn’t see…”

“You’d love that,” Erik murmured into his ear in the shadows and dusty intimacy of the ancestral wine-caves, air dry and papery on his tongue. “Me making you come, me making you scream, while you hold the world just how you want it…”

“I wouldn’t let anyone see,” Charles whispered back. “And I want this. Only us. Our secret. Mine, and yours.” And Erik’s cock shuddered and jumped, drips rolling out of the slit, at the emphasis. Every thrum of urgency that’d been building throughout the day gathered, poised for a thunderclap.

Charles freed the other hand—it’d been steadying Erik’s hip—and swiped his index finger through the shine, and held it up, and licked it.

Erik whimpered. Not even ashamed.

Charles stopped, blinked, laughed. “Oh…well, we should really learn not to tempt fate…Hank’s thinking of coming down after us. I could distract him, but we ought to go back.”

Erik snarled a number of wholeheartedly blasphemous obscenities in multiple languages. Charles kindly fixed both their pants and then ran a hand through his own hair, leaving it more disastrous than before. “Think of this as…making it last, perhaps. More satisfying in the end. Discipline.”

“Your idea of discipline is irritatingly _un_ satisfying,” Erik said, pun intended and worth it for the resultant eye-roll. “Your hair is perfect.”

Charles narrowed eyes at his seeming sincerity, grabbed a wine-bottle at random from the closest shelf, and let Erik kiss the back of his neck twice on the way up the stairs.

 

And the shivering thunderclap sensation never went away. Not when Charles looked at him, lips wet with a sip of wine, and nudged their knees together under the table. Not when every shift of his own weight in his chair made Erik’s body acutely mindful of the fact that he wasn’t taking his fellow headmaster off to bed _right now_.

Hank had taken one look at them, especially the hair, and choked on a bite of pasta. Charles had smiled sweetly. Erik had waited until Charles wasn’t looking, and then smiled too. _Not_ sweetly. Hank had gulped, and started attacking spaghetti with the desperation of a doomed man.

Charles, _finally_ , after most of the students had gone and the dessert-course brownies of the night had vanished, licked chocolate from a fingertip—no, from that _same_ fingertip, and Erik’s brain all but shut off at the realization—and ran his tongue over his lips, and Erik thought _yes PLEASE,_ and they ran upstairs without looking back. Portraits of scientists and explorers, Mendel and Galileo and Ada Lovelace, grinned knowingly at them on the staircase; Charles had banished the haughty Xavier ancestors to the attic years ago, and Erik thoroughly approved.

Nothing around that might ever hurt Charles. No memories tinged with old broken bones and even older neglect. No future wars if he could prevent them. Whatever he had to do.

He unlocked the door without hands and slammed it shut behind them and kissed Charles’s hand when it found his face. Charles was smiling, lopsided and wry. _Oh, Erik. You know I’d do all that for you._

Erik did not especially want to think about that. He was the darker one, the one who could carry all the blood and all the sins; he could take it so that Charles didn’t have to.

“We’ve been through one war,” Charles said, “and you don’t have to, either. We’re both guilty of everything we’ve ever had to do, and we’ll do it all again if you’re right and the next one’s coming. We can keep people safe. You and I can. Together.” _And I love you._

“We will,” Erik said, no questions and no doubt, _and_ _I love you_. And he backed Charles toward the bed, stripping off clothing along the way; no holding back now, no lingering drawn-out deliberation, only burning lust and love and bare skin meeting skin. Sweat and salt and arousal in the air. The limpid butter-yellow swirl of lamplight and the tumble of tidepool-hued satin sheets. The catch of breath in lungs and deep ragged moans filling the night. The taste of chocolate lurking unexpectedly in Charles’s mouth under his.

They’d been waiting since the morning, currents running high all day; here and now the pull became a flood, and Erik needed, wanted, yearned toward every touch. He knew Charles was right with him, dam breaking at last; he didn’t have to ask what Charles wanted or how, because those images were spilling free and coming loose around them. Charles on his back, Erik inside him; Charles’s legs around Erik’s waist as Erik moved inside him, both of them drunk on sensation, overwhelming as honey and wine and crystallized champagne.

 _I want you,_ Charles told him, eyes huge, gazing up at him. Charles did love that, being touched, being wanted, feeling full and cherished; Erik loved that too, loved knowing he could give that—could _be_ that—for those blue eyes. And he knew that Charles knew.

The scented oils lived in metal-capped jars in the left bedside table. He picked one at random. Vivid tropical decadence flooded through the air, otherworldly and fantastical. Coconut, Erik thought. Mango. Exotic shores and spices and imaginary realms.

He left kisses across the fair skin of Charles’s stomach while Charles shivered, while Erik’s fingers moved inside him.

When he sank home at last, Charles gasped—or they both did, he realized, feeling the inhale in his own lungs as the sound echoed in his ears. All day, so many hours, so close. And now: here.

He knew he wouldn’t last long, and didn’t try. Charles arched up against him, panting broken words in their heads, _yes_ and _there_ and _oh please yes ERIK_ —and in the end not even that, only shuddering blissful waves of ecstasy rolling on and on. Erik thrust, cock sliding through slickness and tight muscle and Charles, Charles around him and in his soul, and pulled back and breathed a feather-light kiss over parted lips, drinking in their next breath.

Charles went rigid under him, hips taut, whole body suspended at the peak. Their eyes met, and the climax blew through them in dazzling white, oscillating billows of endless light. Charles came with his cock caught between their bodies and spurting sticky pulses everywhere; Erik came inside him, pouring it into him, thinking his name.

After, Charles was half-asleep, worn-out and drowsy and disinclined to move, back not twinging but making itself known as existent. Erik coaxed him to lie back among pillows, cleaned up stickiness and traces of oil and himself, and kissed his palm, the delicate skin of his inner forearm, the freckles at the crease of his elbow. Charles’s headache had gone, or ninety-nine percent so; the rest would fade with some care and tea and ginger biscuits and Erik’s arms around him after sex.

 _I do love you,_ Charles yawned, head on Erik’s shoulder.

 _I know. I love you._ The night pooled warm and heavy around them, satiated and replete. The sheets lay in happily somnolent hills and valleys, and had no words left in the afterglow.

 _Whatever happens,_ Charles said, _we’ll be brilliant together, we can handle anything together,_ and Erik touched lips to the top of his head and answered _yes_.


End file.
